EU should scrutinize Montenegro--Wild West for the press

Nestled between Croatia's Dalmatian coast
and Albania, the small state of Montenegro (14,000 square kilometers, 630,000
inhabitants) evokes images of sandy beaches, pristine lakes, and gorgeous mountains.
The wild beauty advertised by its savvy tourist board, however, looks more like
the Wild West for the Montenegrin press. In the past weeks a number of violent
attacks against critical journalists have rocked the country.

On December 26, 2013, a bomb exploded
outside the office of Mihailo Jovovic, the editor-in-chief of the independent
daily Vijesti. On January 3, 2014, Lidija
Nikcevic, a journalist working with the other independent daily, Dan, was severely beaten by an
individual armed with a baseball bat. On January 12, a device went off outside
the home of author and Vijesti
contributor Jevrem Brkovic. "It remains unclear who is responsible," Vijesti's director, Zeljko Ivanovic, wrote dryly in the EUobserver. "As usual in cases of
attacks against media, the police have been unable to identify the
perpetrators."

To some, these incidents did not come as a
surprise. Since its independence from Serbia in 2006, the country has hardly
shone in the assessments of international human rights, press freedom, or
anticorruption groups. "This is just the latest in a series of violent
incidents on journalists and media in Montenegro," said OSCE media freedom representative
Dunja Mijatovic. In 2012, Montenegro was even included in an infamous list
of "mafia states," alongside Myanmar, Venezuela, and Guinea Bissau, in a Foreign
Affairs essay by Moises
Naim. "In a mafia state," wrote Naim, "high government officials actually
become integral players in, if not the leaders of, criminal enterprises, and
the defense and promotion of these enterprises' businesses become official
priorities."

Despite this dubious reputation, Montenegro
is a candidate for membership in the European Union. Formal accession talks
were started in 2012. Although the European Commission has played its
conventional tune of reform through integration, this process has been fraught
with doubts and second thoughts. "Montenegro's ills seem encysted in the
system," a high-level EU official told CPJ.

To the chagrin of the government in
Podgorica, the shockwaves of these recent attacks have jolted the Brussels EU
headquarters, where enlargement officials are tasked with monitoring Montenegro's
compliance with the so-called Copenhagen criteria regarding democracy, human
rights, the rule of law, and the market economy. "Recent attacks against the media
are unacceptable," said
the European commissioner in charge of enlargement, Stefan Fule, on
February 5. "Avoiding impunity for the perpetrators is the best tool to prevent
such crimes in the future."

But how can you avoid impunity in a country
where, as underlined in a January briefing
by the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF), the rulers have nurtured a
culture of impunity? "Most incidents remain unsolved. In no case has motivation
been established nor has anyone been held responsible for ordering an attack,"
writes MDIF, an independent non-profit organization which has been supporting the
Vijesti media group for the past 15 years.

In fact, behind its serene, tourist-friendly
facade, Montenegro is a political Jurassic Park. Since the fall of communism 25
years ago, it has been dominated by Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic, a former
close ally of Serbia's ultranationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic. Crime and
corruption have prospered and press freedom has taken a beating. "In the past
decade," Ivanovic reminded, "the founder and editor of a daily newspaper has
been killed, editors and journalists have been physically attacked, cars
belonging to media companies have been set on fire, and defamation cases seeking
hundreds of thousands of euros have been brought against critics."

The government has fostered a climate of
hostility against independent media and fanned smear campaigns against its
opponents in the press. In this tug of war it has ruthlessly used the resources
of the state: public advertising has been refused to critical media and private
companies have been persuaded under the threat of tax inspections not to place
ads in media deemed hostile to the government. Tons of public money has also
been poured into the lackluster national paper Pobjeda, which slavishly parrots the official line.

Press freedom is generally considered a key
barometer of the general state of human rights and democracy in a country. It
is also an essential requirement for EU membership. Brussels officials have
chosen not to shout too loudly this time. However, drawing from their bruising
experience with Romania and Bulgaria, they know that rushing candidate countries
into the EU without solving key issues linked to the rule of law, corruption, or
organized crime is a recipe for disaster.

"Next May's elections to the European
Parliament are likely to bring to the assembly a larger cohort of Euroskeptical
deputies that will scrutinize any new entrant," the senior EU official told
CPJ. "The Montenegrin government would be well-advised to heed Brussels' concerns
if it does not want to be sent down the waiting queue."

In recent years Djukanovic had an easy ride
because, as Ivanovic writes, he toed the Brussels line on regional Balkan
issues such as Kosovo and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia. In exchange the EU turned a blind eye to the
harassment of civil society and independent media in Montenegro. This "cynical
trade-off," as Ivanovic calls it, will not hold much longer if prickly MEPs aware
of the European public's enlargement fatigue decide to strictly monitor Podgorica's
progress in adopting EU norms and standards.

[Reporting
from Brussels]

CPJ Europe Representative Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and longtime press freedom and human rights activist. He teaches international journalism at the Université catholique de Louvain and is a columnist for the Belgian daily Le Soir.